The Marine's Temptation. Jennifer Morey

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       Chapter 4

      Stepping up to the old redbrick building with rows of narrow windows and a flag waving out front, Carson entered the lobby of the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and told the receptionist he was here to see Major Sergeant Copeland. He’d left Georgia at their hotel. When he finished here, she was going out with him for ice cream, and not just any ice cream.

      Copeland appeared moments later, his green suit decorated with rows of badges, ribbons and medals above the left breast pocket and rank insignia on his arm. Carson walked toward him, ever aware of the limp he couldn’t hide.

      “Lieutenant Adair.” Copeland shook his hand. “Good to see you up and moving. You healed well.”

      “Better than expected.” Better than not walking. He had to keep telling himself that.

      “Come with me.”

      Copeland wasn’t a man who wasted words. Carson followed him down a hall, certain that the man would someday rise to lead MARSOC. Through a secure door and down another hall, they entered a windowless office area. A woman worked behind a desk there, her pictured badge marked with her security level in a code the military base had chosen.

      Through another secure door, they entered a conference room. There was a table to seat eight, a safe, a shredder and two computers at a desk in the back. A state-of-the-art computer monitor hung from the wall and there was a phone in the middle of the table. There were some papers lying out and some high-resolution satellite images.

      “We had the local police in San Diego send us over what they have on the shooting attempt,” Copeland said, reaching for the papers and handing them to Carson. “I’ve had our guys looking into it and passed the information over to our marine in South Korea.”

      Carson began to skim over the first report. “Is it Morris you’ve got over there?”

      “Yeah.”

      Morris was one of his teammates. Only three of them had made it out alive on their botched mission.

      Copeland saw the grim change in him. “They all miss you. Hell, I miss you. You were one my best soldiers, Carson.”

      Unwilling to talk about it, Carson moved to the table where the photos lay. There were several of North Korean facilities that must be used for weapons research and development. The photos didn’t show much, only changes in vehicles parked there, but the same vehicles showed up, nothing new and no increase in number.

      “As you can see, there’s been no sign of unusual activity there,” Copeland said. “Nothing to indicate they’ve stepped up engineering efforts. There’s been no change in government activity, either.”

      That suggested the North Koreans had failed in securing the information Carson and his team had been sent to intercept. Their intel had exposed a group of terrorists who were talking to North Korea’s leader and would have accepted money in exchange for information on pressure transducer technology. That was all Carson and his team were able to glean. The terrorists in Myanmar were in contact with someone, presumably someone from the United States, who had access to technology that would help North Korea manufacture their own transducer.

      Transducers were used in gas centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium. That had been enough to send Carson and his team in to stop the transfer. They were never able to confirm success.

      They had never learned the identity of the person who was going to bring the technology, only knew through the terrorists that the meeting would take place. Somehow the terrorists discovered their presence and a gunfight had erupted. One of Carson’s teammates had gone after the man the terrorists were supposed to meet. But the man got away, and Carson’s teammate had been killed. The plan had been to capture the man and interrogate him, along with stopping him from transferring sensitive US technology to an arms-embargoed country.

      “They didn’t get the technology,” Carson said.

      “Right. But then why did someone go after you?”

      Why would the terrorists or the mystery man try to kill him if they didn’t have the technology? “Maybe the mystery man still had it and they’re waiting to arrange a new meet.”

      “So they think killing you would facilitate that?”

      Copeland was right. It didn’t make sense. Killing Carson and anyone else on the team wouldn’t stop the US military from organizing a mission to stop another transfer attempt.

      “They’d want me alive if they thought I had it.” But why would they think he had it? And if the mystery man had it to begin with, what had happened to cause him to lose it? “Maybe they want revenge.”

      Carson may not have been the easiest target to find after leaving the military, and it would take planning to attack him in San Diego. AdAir Corp had security, and the ranch had a security system. And if they believed Carson and his team had taken the data, they would presume they had given it to the US government. Carson or his teammates wouldn’t hang on to it. The revenge motive made sense in that regard.

      But how had the mystery man lost the data? Carson had gone over the mission many times. He could think of no incident during the gunfight when someone could have taken the data. The mystery man had to have gotten away with it, or not had it with him at all.

      “I’ve asked Morris to talk to the North Korean border guard he’s coerced to help us.”

      “He’s in contact with a North Korean guard? How’d he manage that?”

      “We’ll get him out of North Korea in exchange. He’s getting scared, though. Just before you called with the news that someone tried to kill you, Morris learned two North Korean engineers were executed and their families sent to prison camps. We believe this occurred after they failed to obtain the technology.”